Publications

Web

National Markets - The Art of American Advertising

changed the American marketplace. Over 240,000 miles of track laid across the country from 1830 to 1910 required the quick and efficient production of railroad equipment and supplies. This thriving new... View Details

17 Feb 2022
Book

When Employees Feel a Sense of Purpose, Companies Succeed

right? That’s the only answer. If you’ve been pretending not to be gay all day or changing your accent, then when five p.m. comes, you’re out of there.” Wallace knows he can’t simply model individuality at... View Details

Keywords: by Ranjay Gulati

01 Jun 2004
News

Strengthening Ties with Executive Education Graduates

Fischer It’s been a busy — and productive — spring for the dedicated volunteers who make up the Alumni Association Board of Directors. I want to quickly recap the highlights. The Global Leadership Forum Committee, chaired by Jean-Marc... View Details

Keywords: Ted Fischer; Alumni Association Board of Directors; committee; Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools; Educational Services

January 2009
Case

Xi'an International University: The Growth of Private Universities in China

By: William C. Kirby, Michael Shih-ta Chen, Keith Chi-ho Wong and Tracy Manty

Huang Teng founded Xi'an International University (XAIU) as a private institute of higher education in 1992. Throughout its ensuing years, the school filled a niche and met the demand of students who did not test into one of China's public institutions. In 2008, it was... View Details

Keywords: Higher Education; Growth and Development Strategy; Private Ownership; Expansion; Education Industry; China

August 2016
Article

Asymmetric Effects of Favorable and Unfavorable Information on Decision-making Under Ambiguity

By: Alexander Peysakhovich and Uma R. Karmarkar

Most daily decisions involve uncertainty about outcome probabilities arising from incomplete knowledge, i.e., ambiguity. We explore how the addition of partial information affects these types of choices using theoretical and empirical methods. Our experiments in both... View Details

Keywords: Ambiguity; Decision Making; Outcomes; Information; Decision Choices and Conditions; Outcome or Result

Article

Third-Party Punishment as a Costly Signal of High Continuation Probabilities in Repeated Games

By: Jillian J. Jordan and David G. Rand

Why do individuals pay costs to punish selfish behavior, even as third-party observers? A large body of research suggests that reputation plays an important role in motivating such third-party punishment (TPP). Here we focus on a recently proposed reputation-based... View Details

Keywords: Direct Reciprocity; Evolution; Dispersal; Cooperation; Trust; Reputation; Game Theory

2021
Working Paper

An Empirical Study of Time Allotment and Delays in E-commerce Delivery

By: M. Balakrishnan, MoonSoo Choi and Natalie Epstein

Problem definition: We study how having more time allotted to deliver an order affects the speed of the delivery process. Furthermore, we seek to predict orders that are likely to be delayed early in the delivery process so that actions can be taken to avoid delays.... View Details

Keywords: Logistics; E-commerce; Mathematical Methods; AI and Machine Learning; Performance Productivity

SSRN

February 2014 (Revised May 2014)
Background Note

Finding the Money: An Overview of Infrastructure Finance Challenges and Opportunities

By: Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Daniel Fox

This overview describes how the United States funds and finances infrastructure investment to maintain its economic competitiveness. It considers the roles of taxpayers, users, government allocators and lenders, and private investors in the infrastructure funding... View Details

Keywords: Finance; Infrastructure; Technology; United States

January 2015 (Revised April 2015)
Case

Zeal: Launching Personalized and Social Learning

By: John J-H Kim and Christine S. An

Set in 2014, this case follows John Danner and his team at Zeal as they consider their product development strategy. In February 2013, serial entrepreneurs John Danner and Sanjay Noronha co-found Zeal, an education technology start up providing a web-based, mobile... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Education Technology; MVP; Product Development; Product Market Fit; Monetization Strategy; SaaS Business Models; Education; Personalized Learning

January 2018
Technical Note

Business at the Base of the Pyramid: Understanding Impact and Impact Evaluations

By: V. Kasturi Rangan and Tricia Gregg

Unlike financial success, there is no clear consensus regarding how best to define and measure social impact. This HBS Technical Note written for students of the HBS MBA course Business at the Base of the Pyramid (BBOP), offers readers pragmatic perspectives on how the... View Details

Keywords: Developing Countries and Economies; Social Issues; Value Creation; Human Needs; Performance Evaluation

06 Oct 2017
News

Making Patients and Doctors Happier — The Potential of Patient-Reported Outcomes

30 Nov 2009
Research & Ideas

Tracks of My Tears: Reconstructing Digital Music

those data using an econometric model that relates the growth in online music buying to the revenues per bundle. Q: Could we have real-world definitions of what you mean by bundle, pure bundle, mixed bundle,... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Music

October 2017 (Revised April 2018)
Case

Improving Worker Safety in the Era of Machine Learning (A)

By: Michael W. Toffel, Dan Levy, Jose Ramon Morales Arilla and Matthew S. Johnson

Managers make predictions all the time: How fast will my markets grow? How much inventory do I need? How intensively should I monitor my suppliers? Which potential customers will be most responsive to a particular marketing campaign? Which job candidates should I... View Details

Keywords: Machine Learning; Policy Implementation; Empirical Research; Inspection; Occupational Safety; Occupational Health; Regulation; Analysis; Forecasting and Prediction; Policy; Operations; Supply Chain Management; Safety; Manufacturing Industry; Construction Industry; United States

01 Mar 2018
News

Realizing The Potential Of One Harvard

Collaboration Leads to New Programs for Business and Education Two new programs developed and led by HBS faculty in collaboration with colleagues from across Harvard University—one in business analytics and another in school leadership—are demonstrating the real-world... View Details

Article

Kill or Die: Moral Judgment Alters Linguistic Coding of Causality

By: Julian De Freitas, Peter DiScioli, Jason Nemirow, Maxim Massenkoff and Steven Pinker

What is the relationship between the language people use to describe an event and their moral judgments? We test the hypothesis that moral judgment and causative verbs rely on the same underlying mental model of people’s actions. Experiment 1a finds that participants... View Details

Keywords: Moral Cognition; Moral Psychology; Causative Verbs; Trolley Problem; Argument Structure; Moral Sensibility; Judgments

October 2013
Article

Shattering the Myth of Separate Worlds: Negotiating Non-Work Identities at Work

By: Lakshmi Ramarajan and Erin M. Reid

How much of our self is defined by our work? Fundamental changes in the social organization of work are destabilizing the relationship between work and the self. As a result, parts of the self traditionally considered outside the domain of work, i.e., "non-work"... View Details

Keywords: Identity; Diversity; Strategy; Jobs and Positions; Work-Life Balance

19 Mar 2018
News

The Unintended Consequences Of Starting A Trade War With Mexico

2016
Working Paper

The Attenuating Effect of Banking Relationships on Credit Market Disruption

By: Stefan Dimitriadis and Mike Horia Teodorescu

This article examines how the relationship between banks and corporations moderates the effect of credit market disruptions. The 2008-09 financial crisis led to a dramatic restriction in the supply of credit to corporations via the syndicated loan market... View Details

Keywords: Banks and Banking; Relationships; Financial Markets; System Shocks; Banking Industry; United States